Fewer British firms have cyber insurance policies -PwC

Oct 5 The number of British firms insured
against cyber threats has fallen sharply in the past year even
though many doubled their security budgets after some
high-profile companies suffered attacks, a survey by PwC showed
on Wednesday.

The auditing and corporate advisory firm said companies were
reluctant to invest in cyber insurance because they viewed
products available as inadequate.

PwC interviewed 479 executives at British companies and only
38 percent said their company had a cyber insurance policy, down
from 59 percent in a similar survey a year ago.

"The drop in take-up of cyber insurance shows that this is
still maturing as a product," Domenico del Re, insurance
director at PwC, said.

"Companies do not see the cover currently on offer as
targeted to their individual risks and therefore not value for
money."

The amount of cover insurers offer does not come close to
the potential losses seen by companies from a truly damaging
cyber attack, PwC said.

Over the past two years, British companies such as broadband
operator TalkTalk, Experian, the world's
biggest credit data company, and Sage Group, a financial
software provider, have been targeted by hackers.

PwC also spoke to 14 specialist insurance companies in
London to look at how the insurers view cyber risks.

Half of insurers who responded sell cyber policies, or see
cyber insurance as an area of growth, while the other half do
not actively pursue it, often believing the risk to be
"borderline insurable", PwC said.

Most of the insurers who offer cyber cover, however, still
"tread carefully" and tend to limit the amount of cover offered
under each policy.

About 95,000 subscribers left TalkTalk following the cyber
breach, when the personal details of 157,000 customers were
stolen from its database via its website.

The cost of the attack was clear in TalkTalk's full-year
statutory pretax profit which more than halved to 14 million
pounds after exceptional items of 83 million pounds.

British companies, which now spend about 6.2 million pounds
($7.9 million) on average on security, are also more likely than
firms around the world to keep their cards close to their chest
and not share security knowledge, PwC said.
($1 = 0.7857 pounds)
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by
Susan Fenton)